Despite facing a sea of troubles, shares in The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) are rising again. The current quarter is generally the best for DIS stock. The holidays are a strong season for its parks and its biggest movies often come out at the end of the year.

There’s the new Star Wars. It’s also football season, which makes the quarter strong for ESPN. But behind the fun, the expectations of $1.59 per share of earnings and $15.33 billion of revenue to be announced Feb. 8, there are big concerns about DIS stock.

The biggest should be the sex scandals that only began with producer Harvey Weinstein. It could yet take out John Lasseter, the man who built Disney’s Pixar franchise. He is on a six-month “sabbatical” and Disney executives are keeping quiet about it.

The Resorts Guy

Then there’s the question of a successor to CEO Bob Iger, who is already past retirement age at 66. The new contender is Robert Chapek, who currently heads the parks division.

True, the parks unit is where the growth is for DIS stock, with revenue up 8% for fiscal 2017 but that slipped in the fourth quarter.  True, Chapek has worked in other areas, like film. But even his official Disney biography shows him mainly to be a brand manager, a marketing guy.

Another question: Did Chapek just take the park reins at a good time? He came on in March 2015 when plans for Shanghai were set, and the rest of the company was about to head to the rocks. The general view is that he’s competent, but no visionary.

Decisions to Be Made

Then there are all the big decisions to be made and fires to be put out.

Should Disney buy the studio and TV operations  of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (NASDAQ:FOX)? Such a move would more than double the revenues of the studio while making Disney even more of a TV company.

The bulls note that this would make its coming streaming bundles even more attractive to consumers. It also would make the company more competitive with

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), whose shares have been becalmed in the last month as Disney’s plans have begun to take shape.

Still, Chapek would be walking into a minefield, with long-time TV favorites like Charlie Rose and, now, Matt Lauer being shown the door and with political correctness even hitting such Disney favorites as Frozen, an increasingly important franchise. Don’t even get me started on Pocahontas.

Then, ESPN has just suffered its second layoff of the year, with about 250 having been let go this year. It sounds big, but it doesn’t come close to making up for cord-cutting. Plus, ESPN is still locked into long-term rights contracts.

Moreover, as I noted early in November, Fox doesn’t solve Disney’s biggest problem: its lack of presence in video gaming. Disney licenses its product to video game producers, who often fail with it, as with the recent Marvel Heroes shutdown.

This is where the future lies, where the time of young people is being spent. Disney not only has little presence there, but no one at the top even focused on it.

The Bottom Line on DIS Stock

Despite all this, DIS stock is on the rise, up $5 per share over the last month to a three-month high of over $103 per share. There is talk of a dividend hike of another 10%.

Mostly there is faith that, in a very uncertain market, Disney is an island of stability with its slow but steady growth and below-market price to earnings ratio of 18.

My question becomes, are we talking about DIS stock at this price, or the stock market? If you have a long-term time horizon, five years or more, buying Disney here makes sense, as things should sort themselves out.

If you’re looking at just the next few months or even the next year, know you’re buying a lot of uncertainty.

Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of the historical mystery romance The Reluctant Detective Travels in Time, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned no shares in companies mentioned in this story.